Filed under: Internet Tools, Beta Beat
uTorrent for Mac beta officially released
Way back in June of 2007, rumors of a beta version of uTorrent for the Mac first started making waves. For the uninitiated, uTorrent is a super-lightweight BitTorrent client which is widely considered the best in the business. Sadly, it has remained a Windows-only option. A few months ago, an alpha version was leaked (appropriately, on a BitTorrent tracker), but it was alpha, buggy and had a minimal UI (even by uTorrent standards).
Today, uTorrent has officially released its first Mac beta for Intel Macs running OS X 10.5 Leopard. It doesn't have all the features of its Windows counterpart (it's missing the RSS downloader, for instance) but it has a nice interface and the signature uTorrent low-memory footprint.
The only real question will be, is this too little too late? When uTorrent for the Mac was first announced 18 months ago, the BitTorrent client landscape was very different. Transmission was still new and buggy and Vuze (nee Azureus) suffered from significant problems with Tiger and Java. Today, Transmission is a full featured client and Vuze, although still a memory hog, is signicantly faster and more stable in Leopard.
This doesn't mean that it isn't great to finally have uTorrent for OS X -- it just means that the client will need to do more than just exist to get many users to switch over.
uTorrent for Mac is free. It is beta software and it will have bugs, but it is available now.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
jmoney said 10:39PM on 11-26-2008
No offense to Transmission or anything, but I've been a long time user of uTorrent on Windows and will gladly switch right over.
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Oleg said 10:47PM on 11-26-2008
While I use uTorrent on my windows box for ages now I find most recent Transmission to be rather good.
Luigi193 said 10:45PM on 11-26-2008
Transmission is just so awesome... don't know how i'd switch!
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Philster said 1:45AM on 11-27-2008
I second Luigi. Transmission is great. And continues to improve in stability and features. uTorrent need to step it up considerably for me to consider switching.
iGO said 10:47PM on 11-26-2008
Yeah, Transmission is solid, super stable, easy as drag and dropping torrent file, and .....done.
Why anything else, beats me.
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Piracy Ho! said 10:50PM on 11-26-2008
At least this screenshot shows the type of files the majority of uTorrent users download. None of this legitimate downloading of Ubuntu ISO bs you see in other bittorrent client screenshots.
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Christina Warren said 11:02PM on 11-26-2008
Well,I figured why front...yes, I download tv shows. And seeing as I've purchased all the DVDs available for those shows, I'm hardly hurting the companies.
JR said 11:07PM on 11-26-2008
I find that the downloading of TV shows via torrents or other means is at best a gray area and not necessarily piracy (although I'm sure most people will disagree with me).
Most of us have PVRs (myself included) and how many of us actually watch the commercials instead of fast forwarding past them?
Movies are a little different obviously, but for TV shows, seeing as we get them on TV, we're able to PVR them and we don't have to watch commercials, well it's not that much different from downloading them.
Dave said 11:43PM on 11-26-2008
"I find that the downloading of TV shows via torrents or other means is at best a gray area and not necessarily piracy (although I'm sure most people will disagree with me)."
I would agree that most would disagree, but I agree. :)
The way I see it I've been able to record TV shows with an antenna since VHS/Beta days and then fast forward past the commercials. Torrenting TV shows is really not that different. Movies, software, etc. is different.
That's my opinion.
balls said 11:45PM on 11-26-2008
@Christina: Pics or it aint true.
colouroflight said 1:33AM on 11-27-2008
How uptight do you have to be to berate people for downloading TV shows?
brian said 3:49AM on 11-27-2008
im sorry, but i do have to call out christina on the fact that none of these episodes have been released on dvd yet
Johnzim said 8:07AM on 11-27-2008
@Brian
I believe that was precisely her contention.
She would have bought the episodes on DVD had they been made available to her as a consumer.
Christina Warren said 9:35AM on 11-27-2008
http://flickr.com/photos/film_girl/sets/72157603809392166/
And yes, as soon as season 5 of the Office, season 3 of 30 Rock and season 4 of Sunny are released on DVD, I will buy them too. :-)
Those photos are from February and don't show all my TV DVDs at this point.
You know, I don't condone piracy, I buy a TON of digital media and physical media. That said, I have no ethical or moral qualms with downloading an AVI before the DVD is released. I want the extra features of the DVD and the iTunes download can't give me that. I'm all for double-dipping, Lord knows I've re-bought more than my fair share of CDs, digital albums, DVDs, and more -- but I'm not doing it for a TV show that has all its episodes on Hulu (and Sunny is also on Comcast On Demand).
Happy Thanksgiving!
balls said 11:38AM on 11-27-2008
@Christina: Guess I don't need any sweet-potato pie tonite; i just ate a few slices of humble pie.
Eh...that sounded better in my head.
Hotrod said 2:19PM on 11-27-2008
Christina, thats exactly what my torrent window looks like also, my 3 favorite shows!
Considering you can watch all these on hulu, I don't see why downloading them is a problem. I would rather download them via bittorrent, and watch them on my TV while laying down in my bed, than to be hunched over staring at a computer monitor (not to mention the annoying 30sec ads on hulu)
vandil said 3:30AM on 11-28-2008
Bravo for showing a screenshot of what people really use BitTorrent for.
Perhaps when content providers offer free downloads of their shows (even with ads, Hulu-style) in iPod (or other media player) formats, humanity can move on from the digital dark age of either show non-digital availability, DRM'd files, and HD-locked video files
Nathan said 11:00PM on 11-26-2008
Though I had grown to love Transmission, which I use on my Mac and Linux systems, here I am crawling back to my old friend-with-benefits, uTorrent.
I don't know why, but I always seem to get significantly faster speeds in uTorrent under Windows than I could with Transmission under Mac/Linux. I'll have to see how uTorrent Mac stands up to Transmission Mac...
As for why the need for uTorrent when Transmission is well established on the Mac, since when did Mac users dislike choice? I'd say the more quality software available for the Mac, the better. It would be nice if BitTorrent decided to make uTorrent OSS though...
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JR said 11:10PM on 11-26-2008
uTorrent isn't your mommy's torrent program. It's really meant for power users (although it can easily be used by casuals just as well).
Specifically, the fact that uTorrent can parse RSS feeds and enough options to keep you busy for weeks goes to show how much effort is put into this program.
This isn't to take anything away from Transmission, but it terms of advanced usage, there is no comparison.
Just wanted to point that out for all the people wondering "Why uTorrent?"
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Max said 11:16PM on 11-26-2008
When uTorrent for Mac gets RSS downloader, I'll be switching from Transmission. I love the idea of being able to tell my client to automatically download torrents!
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